Cinécriture Féminine: Female Subjectivity in Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) in Comparison with Godard’s Films

This article aims to reinstall the understated significance of female auteur Agnès Varda in French New Wave cinema. By analyzing distinctions in cinematography and characterization between Varda’s film Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) and Jean-Luc Godard’s oeuvre from the same period, I argue that Cléo from 5 to 7 advanced a vision of female subjectivity that controverted the construction of silenced female characters in Godard’s films. With her feminist pen of cinécriture , or “film-writing,” Varda challenged the prevalent androcentrism in the New Wave and pioneered second wave feminism in France.